The Senate campaign trail ignited into a gas-price war yesterday as Rick Lazio scorched Hillary Rodham Clinton as a “limousine liberal” who doesn’t realize New Yorkers are hurting from high pump prices.

Clinton immediately fired back that it was the Long Island congressman who skipped a recent vote that could have lowered fuel prices and she praised her husband’s administration for taking steps to bring prices down.

At stops at Mobil stations in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, Lazio charged that gas prices have reached a “crisis” and he proposed temporarily suspending the 18.3 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, eliminating an additional 4.3 cent-a-gallon levy enacted in 1993, and opening the Strategic Oil Reserve to put more fuel on the market.

Lazio blamed the problem on Hillary Clinton, President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

“What she needs to do is get out of the motorcade and check out the real issues affecting New Yorkers, like gasoline prices,” the Republican said in Buffalo, at a station where pump prices ranged from $1.67 to $1.79.

The Suffolk County Republican said Clinton has ignored the pocketbook pain caused by high pump prices, reflecting her “limousine liberal outlook.”

“That’s why we say Mrs. Clinton is out of touch with the real issues affecting New Yorkers,” Lazio said, adding that Clinton lives in “fantasy land.”

“Mrs. Clinton has no energy policy and she refuses to take a stand on repeal of the [federal] tax.”

Before Lazio arrived at the Buffalo gas station, volunteers acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign distributed a press release to reporters from Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson attacking Lazio for missing a recent vote in Congress to lower oil prices.

“Months and months ago I think I was among the first people who advocated a Northeastern oil reserve that I thought would be very helpful in helping to lower the cost of home heating oil and gasoline products here in New York,” Clinton said at a news conference on the City Hall steps.

“We could have passed that … He [Lazio] missed that vote.”

“I think the more interesting questions are the relationships between the Republican Party and a lot of the big oil companies,” Clinton said.

Also yesterday, Clinton, in her second press conference in five days on City Hall steps, called for the release of 13 Iranian Jews awaiting sentencing on charges of spying for Israel.

Lazio today will continue to chip away at the gas-price issue at stops in the suburbs and tonight will be the guest of honor at a major fund-raiser in Manhattan for his Senate campaign.